New York City hospital system admits to massive data breach

The New York City Health and Hospital Corp. (HHC) said that personal information of nearly 1.7 million hospital patients, staff, vendors, and contractors was stolen from a GRM Management Information Services van.

The data breach affected patients, staff, vendors and contractors at the Jacobi Medical Center, North Central Bronx Hospital, and their two affiliated health centers. The personal information was collected over the past 20 years and included names, addresses, social security numbers, patients’ medical histories, and the occupational/employee health information of staff, vendors, contractors, and others.

HHC stressed that the files are “not readily accessible without highly specialized expertise and data-mining tools, and there is no evidence to indicate that the information has been accessed and misused.” At the same time, HHC admitted that it did not know where the files are.